Re: IVIV: Chapter 3—Swedish Fish. True joke

[Mark Kohut]

I learned that a black Swedish Fish is not a red
but a black herring......

--- On Tue, 9/8/09, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV: Chapter 3—Swedish Fish
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 9:35 AM
> I laughed at Pat Dubonnet's name,
> though probably not for the right
> reasons. In Australia (and the UK I think) 'bonnet' is the
> equivalent
> of the 'hood' of a car in the US. So the image of a cop
> patting his
> car came immediately to mind, furthering that
> auto--anthropomorpho-fetishism of P's novels.
> 
> Then again, I think 'pat' might be a local version of the
> US 'pet',
> and with the French suffix that would cross-culturally
> translate as
> 'pet of the (masculine) hood'.
> 
> Uh, don't know where I'm going with this, really.
> 
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 11:14 PM, Robin
> Landseadel<robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> > Chapter three [all three and a half pages] serves the
> same function as many
> > similar episodes in Chandler's stories. The P.I. needs
> to tease out some
> > info from the local police without saying much of
> anything about his
> > clients.
> >
> > Pat Dubonnet is the cop who called Hope Harligan with
> the news about Coy
> > Harligan's "OD".  Pat Dubonnet works at the "Gordita
> Beach" police outpost.
> > The Manhattan Beach Police outpost looks like this:
> >
> > http://www.code2high.com/Manhattan%20Beach%20Police/mbpd_station_3.jpg
> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/nlp2wx
> >
> >        He drove past the Gordita Beach station
> house twice before he
> >        recognized it. The place had been radically
> transformed,
> >        courtesy of federal anti-drug money, from a
> pierside booking
> >        desk with a two-coil hot plate and a jar of
> instant coffee into a
> >        palatial cop's paradise featuring
> locomotive-size espresso
> >        machines, its own mini-jail, a motor pool
> full of rolling weaponry
> >        that would otherwise be in Vietnam, and a
> kitchen with a crew
> >        of pastry chefs working around the clock.
> >        IV, page 46
> >
> > Easy to imagine local enforcement agencies getting
> flooded with Federal cash
> > during the dawn of the Nixon administration.
> >
> > Doc enters the station with "a foil wrapped object
> about a foot long" which
> > sounds potentially like a drug but turns out to be a
> hot dog—"one with
> > everything" though that's not a quote, it's a
> punch-line. Pat inhales the
> > dog while Doc works on getting under Pat's skin. What
> Doc finds out from Pat
> > is that Mickey'nBigfootarethisclose. Meanwhile,
> there's echos of Hector's
> > fantasies of getting on the Tube from Vineland:
> >
> >        " . . .It's bound to be a Movie for TV,
> ain't it, whatever happens .
> > . ."
> >
> > I've heard of the Surfer-Lowrider wars but have little
> to offer on the
> > subject save that the "Locals Only" attitude of some
> surfers erupted at the
> > time and continues long afterwards. Google
> "surfer-lowrider wars" and all
> > you get is a reference back to the Inherent Vice
> wiki.
> >
> > As for Swedish Fish:
> >
> >        Swedish Fish are chewy winegum candies
> especially notable
> >        apart from other varieties of winegums in
> Sweden. They have
> >        been developed with special flavors
> specifically for the North
> >        American market[1] by the Swedish candy
> producer Malaco,
> >        which exports products to North America.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Fish
> >
> > This ad for the little fish candies is a little
> masterpiece of surrealism:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0MGFJK7YRM
> >
> 
>